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79 Comments
- Jelfish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+51I hope he gets what he deserves. Up to 101 years may be a good scare tactic, but let's not start handing out death sentences to the newest fad-crime. Remember that rape, murder, and driving into a person while intoxicated are still worse. Let's not throw away our perspective.
- pipdip, on 10/12/2007, -5/+40Although I HATE HATE HATE HATE spammers. I don't think someone should get double what someone gets for murder. That's a little crazy.
- cottonswab, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32"hey what you in here for?"
"murdered entire family then skull F**Ked the dog, you?"
"i..... uh........ um........ phishing."
"o really?"
*disgusting squishy noises, and painful cries of anguish ensue - Eastlygod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30The phishing is about to get replaced with phisting....
- sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26This guy's going to wake up in his jail cell one night to a sound all too familiar: "You've got male!"
- msprout, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Yeah! That's what they deserve for using easily-accessable web software! Those sons of bitches!
If they knew how to dynamically recompile their kernels, then they wouldn't have lost their goddamn money! - Beamerboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I expect the sentencing will be something like "2 Years for all the phishing and using people's credit cards and 99 years for 'misuse of the AOL trademark'".
- aramova, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Guys, remember, this is not a simple spammer.
This guy was stealing people's identity. As a victim of identity theft, myself and many others can say that it's one of the worse crimes someone can do to you without physically harming you.
It can take years of work to fix the damage done, and some times longer. Many people used to just Chapter 7 it, but now that the laws have changed, you really can't anymore if you make more then $6 an hour.
This guy was not sending out Viagra ads, look at TFA...
Charges include,
Wire Fraud
unauthorized use of credit cards
attempted witness harassment
So, this guy gets your parents who probably aren’t very internet savvy to give him their credit card number, and other identity information, then when they testify against him, he harasses them to try to get them not to come to court.
We don't know the scale of how much damage he did, but it would not be unreasonable to assume he easily could of ruined the chances of hundreds of people buying a house, getting a job (bad credit in some cases can get you passed up for a promotion), taken thousands of hours of work to undo what this son of a bitch did...
And you think he should only get a couple months? - jjb123, on 10/12/2007, -11/+24We coming for you Nigerian Prince, where coming!
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@pipdip - yup I agree, only an idiot can dream up 101 years. I rather see that 101 spammers all get one year. Or make that 2 years. How many spammers/scammers have been sent to prison in the past 10 years? Why is it so frelling hard to get them in court anyway? I mean, if I go to an airport wearing the wrong clothes I am faster in prison then one can spell spammer.
- mikev, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8lolz. firefox is teh best ISP evar. :x
- DJCult, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10OMG a AOL PHISHER? He must be TEH HAXOR!!!11!!1!
- koontzorama, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Send me all your user names and passwords and I will make sure that all those Nigerian scammers stop!!!!!!!!!
- msprout, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9101 years for phishing, and then unauthorized CC buying?
Jesus Christ, I could steal everything a guy has, burn his house down, and then roll over his car with a steamroller and get off with less of a sentence. I hope this doesn't become a precident. - swazo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid?
Raping someone gets you less time. - Ray_Justice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ha! At the end of the article it says that one of the charges that he was convicted for was "attempted witness harassment". Hilarious!
- mikev, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7While AOL does indeed blow, many people (yes, even gmail users) get tricked by phishing. :|
I wish gmail had a patch for ignorance - NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well, I'd give him one hour for every spam he sent out. That should have him in jail for a couple of millennia.
-jcr - guitarh3ro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6AOL phails at life (although AIM is quite amazing).
- neeyo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The key words here: "up to" 101 years in prison.
Time he will actually serve... I will guess 2 years probation.
The system works! - wafflez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5honestly, the only people i know who use dial up just use the free trials so they never have to pay...ever...otherwise, everyone gets cable modem with digital phone and cable for really cheap.
- r©ain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@msprout: And while most people get the charges reversed and their cards reissued, someone does end up paying.
Typically, it's the retailer who get stuck with the charge back cost AND are out the product. So that's loss of revenue and expense of both the chargeback fee and the cost of the product. And so this guy is responsible for effectively stealing goods and resulting in fees to these retailers. And I'm sure the products effectively "stolen" account for quite a large sum of money all said and done and thus, multiple felony counts for theft and because this was done over the internet, each count is a count of wire fraud as well, which is serious. And that's just the theft and wire fraud, not the CAN-SPAM violatons or trademark crap. - Beamerboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hope he bought stock in AstroGlide, he is gonna need it.
- Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actualy, the spyware people (Gator/Alexis) are not only getting away with it, but a simple re-branding of their company made them millionaires and out of the spyware spotlight.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10Sorry, but any ***** who thinks $24.95/month is a good deal for a dial-up connection deserves all they get!!
- dandonia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2im betting that could be grounds for dismissal because the judge is personally involved and so would the jury. lol thats ***** cool. Spammers/Scammers should pay but for there whole life.
Whats the average sentence for armed robbery or other crimes of that nature. 101 years is a long time for scarring a few people and robbery.
Wasn't there a guy who got sentenced to the death penalty a few years back for his third strike. The first two crimes which he went to prison for were something like theft and murder but the third crime of shoplifting a Mars Bar that was the most despicable act of man? - ramaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Read the post of aramova above.
Then read rcain's response to msprout.
I'm not saying I've reconciled all of this issue of the appropriate punishment in my mind, but what bothers me is that those who think this potential length of prison terms (which will probably never happen anyway) is excessive seem to be forgetting about the sheer number of attacks on individual people.
The internet age has made possible these billions upon billions of attempts, by one hacker or a few of them, to defraud and steal from individual people. We have been lulled to sleep, so to speak, by the simple ease with which hackers do this, by the broadcast-like nature of this whole thing. But that does not change the reality that the number of victims in these crimes is huge.
So the potentially long sentence comes from MULTIPLE COUNTS and MULTIPLE CRIMES. It can't be appropriately compared to murder unless you count the same number of murders as fraud victims - if someone murdered just as many people as this person has defrauded, then I would sure hope the sentence would be tons longer, and worse in every way, than what this guy is getting for his internet crimes.
Please - think about the number of attempts at fraud and theft here, which are crimes in themselves, and then on top of that the number of people who were financially and personally harmed. Even those who did not fall for his phishing scheme are victims of a crime.
And yes, I am angry about it - I am sick and tired of all of us being constanlty under siege, in OUR internet, that has been hijacked by goons like this person who will hopefully go to jail for a long, long time. The constant flooding of OUR internet infrastructure with this kind of slime, for which the perpetrators pay virtually nothing, is costing all of us lots of money that we can never properly count. Can you imagine what kind of service we'd all receive from our ISPs, and the cost savings that would in some measure be passed on to users, if there were actually a way to stop spam and email fraud? Can you imagine what it's costing us?
Yes, and then IN ADDITION to that there are the thousands of people having their identies and their money stolen.
/rant - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5hes not Nigerian?
- Speed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sad state of affairs, a couple of murderers in Edmonton got PROBATION. Karla Homulka only got about 10 years in prision for multiple rapes and murders.
- Gunsmith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2can we jail the idiots stupid enough to fall for them as well?
- r©ain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3He faces UPTo 101 years, he has not been sentenced.
To put it in persepctive, imagine he had stole everything a guy has, burned his house down, and then rolled over his car with a steamroller 50 times.
You see, it's not that he did someting once. It's that he did it repeatedly and in the act of his crimes, commited other serious crimes (wire fraud) and every count combined rack up to this huge number of years. What will probably happen is that he'll get 20 years and be out in 10 with some nasty probationary terms. Of course, that's assuming he has a real lawyer. If he's going with a public pretender, he'll probably get all 110.. :) - asuraci, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Exactly what I was thinking. If you're going to get this long in jail it better be for something tough.
- drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If he killed the people he conned... Wouldn't he have gotten a lighter sentence?
- nosemuffen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I do know of certain places (believe it or not) where cable is not offered. They either use dial up or they don't have internet. What about them?
- Majorkerina, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow. Now if only they offered the same for whoever thought up Spyware :)
- SoundJudgment, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Way to go! Finally GOT one locked down tight. Hey, Bubba... it's dinner time!
- Archimboldo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I feel no sympathy for him.
- dandonia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2im just sayin ur a tool. aol software is crap it makes ur connection hang up all the time. im one of the unlucky gys that dont have much choice isp wise. i got rid of the software n my connection is far better
- grgspunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nah, he should get the most painful type of capital punishment imaginable.
Maybe by the Brazen Bull or the People Shredder? - dvsbastard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Exactly... Don't jump the gun! I am sure the ever so mediocre legal system will prevail with a matching mediocre sentence! :(
Spanish lotto anyone?! - dandonia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i dont think it should bt thats how shoddy usa law is. it probably wont but it should get reduced
- juliocgrajales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Damn just 101 years, what happens when my son is 102 years old and his personal computer gets hacked by this guy seriously our justice system sucks. (In all seriousness the punishment is a little harsh, don't get me wrong he did something very bad and he deserves to be prosecuted but he should have to pay back all the money he scammed out of people and give him about 15-20 years in prison and he gets out put an ankle bracelet on him that will tell us everytime he logs on to aol.com, which of course by then will be non-existent but even if he thinks to visit aol.com the ankle bracelet will send a signal to the fbi, cia, riaa, mpaa, etc... actually its pretty cool its a ringtone that plays Make it Rain by Fat Joe and they will catch him again and this give him 101 years, bye
- modena, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Are we sure it wasn't five years?
- msprout, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I just don't see how credit card fraud is seen as being so evil. It's not like the owners of the credit cards paid for the dude's extravagance – to the average joe, it's just an inconvenience.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The ultimate crime though, is possessing a small ammount of pot. Coz, we all know that even a couple o grams will cause the earth to implode (or something).
- shortarabguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you're going to call a mistrial on personal bias in spam and phishing, it'll be nearly impossible to find a group of people who have gone unaffected. It's like asking people if they've checked their email before...
- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Let him rot in jail for stealing millions from people.
- drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+112 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Homolka - vaduzl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Any normal person , facing months in Prison, is a Huge deterrent. . It wasn't an accidental crime . But months not years. .
- sakabako, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://duggmirror.com
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